The Moral Sense (Free Press Paperbacks) by James Q. Wilson (PDF)

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Are human beings naturally endowed with a conscience? Or is morality artificially acquired through social pressure and instruction? Most people assume that modern science proves the latter. Further, most of our current social policies are based upon this “scientific” view of the sources of morality. In this book, however, James Q. Wilson seeks to reconcile traditional ideas with a range of important empirical research into the sources of human behavior over the last fifty years. Marshalling evidence drawn from diverse scientific disciplines, including animal behavior, anthropology, evolutionary theory, biology, endocrinology, brain science, genetics, primatology, education and psychology, Wilson shows that the facts about the origin and development of moral reasoning are not at odds with traditional views predating Freud, Darwin and Marx. Our basic sense of right and wrong actually does have a biological and behavioral origin. This “moral sense” arises from the infant’s innate sociability, though it must also be nurtured by parental influence. Thus, this book revives ancient traditions of moral and ethical argument that go back to Aristotle, and reunifies the separate streams of philosophical and scientific knowledge that for so long were regarded as unbridgeable.

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⭐The Moral Sense presents an anthropological/sociological account of (and case for) the role of moral judgments in human experience. Wilson argues that morality is grounded in four basic capacities we humans have because of our natures, reflecting the kind of creatures we have evolved into over the eons. That is, we are fundamentally social creatures and this requires certain capacities which we have developed as a species. He lists these as sympathy (caring about others in some cases), fairness (preferring equitable outcomes to inequitable ones), self-control (the capacity to restrain our desires and needs in order to attain our goals), and duty (the capacity to recognize situations in which we must subordinate our needs to requirements defined by others). Wilson proceeds to argue that these four competences, which most humans share because of genetic inheritance, provide the bedrock on which our social structures are built. He then proposes that the moral claims, beliefs and judgments we make arise as a function of the various culture-specific schemas that human beings develop in the many different societal groups they form.These social forms of life may all be quite different across the planet because there’s lots of room for variation, he reminds us, both because of environmental demands and the stickiness of practices which manifest as social conventions, but, he suggests, there are also certain core similarities among most humans which form the ground on which all social phenomena and institutions stand, i.e., the four capacities/competences he identifies as the basis for social groupings.From this, he argues that we develop moral structure, alongside the empirical knowledge structure we amass in the course of our lives (based on observable/descriptive information), and that this moral dimension occupies a no less objective role than our empirical knowledge does. It’s just that the moral dimension is based on our sentiments, he notes, on our feelings, which he suggests are equivalent to intuitions of the sort that people like G. E. Moore once conceived ethics to be based on. On Wilson’s view, we do not develop our moral beliefs by reasoned analysis of what is most utilitarian or most consistent with pure reason, nor by learning and following prescribed rules of behavior for he finds such explanations inadequate when it comes to explaining how we make the judgments we make, which are generally impromptu, spontaneous and expressive of our feelings of the moment. Yet, he notes, we can train and nurture these feelings in different ways and doing this is one of the primary functions of societal structures and institutions which develop as part of particular cultural groupings’ behavioral practices. We learn more sophisticated sentiments in this way based on, and through, the particular cultural milieu(s) in which we operate — these refinements being derived from, and grounded in, the four society-sustaining capacities he initially describes and which form the basis for societal interaction and which most humans have in common (and which can be discerned, to varying degrees, in various other social-oriented species which have mental capacities somewhat akin to our own).Along the way, he makes the interesting point that Hume actually made a mistake when he claimed that we cannot derive an “ought” claim from an “is” claim. According to Wilson, Hume was not, himself, able to shuck the sort of talk, in his treatise, that depends on just such a derivation. That is, Wilson points out, Hume argues that, while we cannot derive oughts from is’s, he then goes on, only a few pages later, to pronounce that the inclination to care for our own children, which is a natural sentiment we feel and cannot divest ourselves of (it’s grounded in one of the four social capacities, sympathy for others) implies that we “ought” to act in such ways as to care for our children (that is we ought to form family units, look out for their needs, protect them from harm, teach them what they’ll need to know) if and when we have them. This then represents a kind of moral bedrock for our behaviors, grounded in certain innate capacities we have and, in this sense, given the fact of this bedrock, certain “ought” claims follow because it translates into all sorts of cultural-specific conventions about appropriate ways to live, e.g., one should marry in order to form a family unit (rather than abandon the mother — or father — of one’s children), do the things that fathers and mothers do, when putting together and maintaining a family (like earning a living, treating one’s children in ways intended to nurture them such as keeping them fed, sheltered and healthy and educating them to function on their own), avoid behaviors which are destructive to family life such as alcoholism, drug addiction, external sexual activity that would disrupt the family unit, etc. In this fashion, Wilson reasons that humans develop all sorts of culturally-specific practices and expectations which then define our moral universe, the moral dimension of our lives. All sorts of moral prescriptions and proscriptions naturally arise from this basic inclination we have to care about our children and on this view, Hume seems to do just what he says cannot be done: derive “oughts” (as in you ought to do the things necessary to nurture and protect your children) from the fact of having children.Of course, it’s not at all clear that it was this sort of “is to ought” derivation Hume had in mind since he was addressing the notion of logically deriving ought from is in his Treatise (as in, if X is true then it follows by virtue of the meaning of X that you must do Y) rather than a derivation like Wilson’s which really says that ‘if you are an X with sentiment Y, then you will act in accord with Y whenever that sentiment is triggered.’ In this latter case, the “ought” is of the empirical/contingent sort, i.e., the sentiment will entail certain behaviors in the organism because of the way sentiments work. (Yet another kind of “ought” is that of contingencies as in ‘if doing X gets you Y, and you want Y, then you ought to do X.’ This too, can provide a reason in Wilson’s case of having children which might prompt someone to make certain moral choices and not others. But, as with the claim about how sentiments work, it isn’t the “is-to-ought” entailment Hume actually rejected.Of course, if you happen to be one of those rare humans who lack the sentiment of sympathy for one’s children, or in whom that sentiment is very weak, there is still no entailment in the logical sense Hume was concerned with. However, on Wilson’s view, there are strong enough reasons, from a human cultural perspective at least, to have and cultivate the kinds of sentiment he refers to here, and to encourage others to have such sentiments, and to punish those who lack, or otherwise act to reject, them (and to favor institutions and cultural practices which support them) for disregarding or rejecting such sentiments is destructive of the social life humans require and are (Wilson maintains) genetically inclined to prefer. Hence, Wilson contends, we can argue for such sentiments, in an important sense, and we do so by invoking cultural practices and teachings to cultivate these sentiments in society’s members. In this fashion, Wilson proposes a rational basis for moral disputes which can allow us to reach conclusions based on facts. In this, however, Wilson moves away from the classical logical notion of deductive entailment to one characterized by elaborating the implications of commonly shared dispositions (such as wanting to take care of our children).Wilson is also a little simplistic in his treatment of Kant’s categorical imperative since he misses a key aspect of Kant’s point that one can ground a moral claim (contra Hume’s rejection of is/ought derivations) in the requirements of absolute logical consistency. (If one wishes to be entirely rational, as all truly rational beings will wish to be, on pain of forsaking their claim to rationality, then, Kant argues, one cannot honestly and sincerely choose to be in contradiction with reason by failing to take account of others’ interests since theirs are not, in principle, any less compelling than one’s own.) But, as Wilson points out, it’s certainly questionable whether anyone ever thinks of being rational in the absolute Kantian way (most of us think being rational is just to be reasonable about things, including our own needs and desires). Moreover, as Wilson also notes, Kant’s approach is simply too rigid to provide a satisfactory account of moral valuing in real life situations. His prohibition on lying, for instance, would oblige anyone following it, in the absolute sense he espouses, to tell the truth to killers in search of their innocent victims or to honestly divulge a truth to a dying man which would make his last moments more painful than they might otherwise be. None of these examples could be morally avoided if one were to follow a Kantian maxim that lying is absolutely wrong in all cases because it is inconsistent with rationality, even though they run counter to our most obvious and seemingly strongest moral intuitions.On balance, Wilson offers a good account of moral judgments relying on sociological and psychological study results in a philosophically sophisticated way. My biggest beef with him is his choice of sympathy as a core moral competency rather than the broader and seemingly more basic feature of empathy which must underlie instances of sympathy if sympathy is to sincerely occur in individuals at all. And yet the question posed by his choice of sympathy rather than something more basic like empathy remains the same: Whether treating either as a basic or underlying moral-engendering sentiment merely serves to avoid the issue of grounding moral judgments on innate human features which we have by virtue of evolutionary biology alone rather than because of some independent moral choice we, as human beings with the capacity for moral judgment, make. If it’s just biology, then there is some point beyond which our moral judgments cannot go, for how can we ever blame others for lacking what biology has simply omitted to give them — or praise them for having it? And that capacity, to praise or blame for our virtues or faults, does seem to be the core element in the moral case.

⭐You cannot read any of James Q Wilson’s books without accomplishing great learning—about new things and yourself.

⭐This is an important book. If one has only one book to read on morality and ethics, I cannot recommend a better book than Wilson’s “The Moral Sense.” It’s the first and, to my knowledge, the only, book that is a thoroughly modern, naturalistic, and intuitionist theory of ethics to date. The book begins with the challenge facing modern readers: Do we accept the total relativism of Rorty and other pragmatic academics who argue there is no moral sense whatsoever, or do we accept the polar opposite that only revealed religion or Kant’s and Benthan’s absolutist maxims give us a moral sense?According to Wilson, both extremes are to be avoided by conciliating the theory of moral sentiments advanced by David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, and especially Adam Smith in the 18th century with the theory of evolution advanced by Charles Darwin a century later. Wilson arrives at a thoroughly modern conception of human nature and what it means to have a natural moral sense without prescriptive religion or deontological maxims to guide us. It is a wonderfully entertaining and highly thought provoking book to read on what can sometimes be a dull subject.Obviously, modern moral developments have not all been positive. As Wilson observes, we’ve come to our senses about equality, fairness, and empathy towards others, but we may have left behind self-control and duty to others. I think he’s absolutely on target. Unless and until we recognize that morality is not divinely-instituted, but rather empirically established by who we are by nature, and yes a Darwinian nature, then our moral sense will be always miss its target. All four: (1) Fairness, (2) empathy, (3) self-control, and (4) duty must operate concurrently for our morality to be balanced. Wilson’s diagnosis of modernity is that they are imbalanced: We’ve largely omitted self-control and duty from our moral sense and become a tad bit self-absorbed (although recent developments may suggest otherwise).The first-third of the book rehearses the theory of moral sentiments and the applicable theory from evolution to establish the four “impulses” or “intuitions” of morality: Fairness, empathy, self-control, and duty. Notice these are universal, naturally-endowed impulses, not religious or philosophical maxims or prescriptions. We “intuit” these concepts, and from their application with our experience of family, friends, and society, we develop character. This interaction thusly develops a “conscience” to guide us. This is the substance of the second-third of the book. The last-third of the book explains how conscience (i.e., habituated character) forms affiliations, rights, and responsibilities. Here the author’s adds his insights and applies them to a few case examples.The book is not flawless, but it is the most comprehensive, modern, and naturalistic book on ethics to appear in a single volume. That’s a mighty claim, but I think it holds despite my criticism. I have two: (a) Wilson tends to be disorganized to the point of distraction; key concepts almost become ancillary. It’s a problem of organization that could have been avoided by a matter of style. (b) The second criticism is a kind of sloppiness occurs in the final section: Besides trying to “humanize” his theory excessively, many of his personal reflections are too time-bound to be perennially relevant. These flaws would not be so egregious if the third section kept to a simple summary of key concepts; but instead of a simple summary Wilson addles between a summary and ruminations. Because the third section is perhaps the most expansive, these criticisms are all the more glaring.For these reasons, I think the reader would be well-served to precede this book with Matt Ridley’s “The Origins of Virtue,” even though they cover some of the same territory. Ridley is a much more disciplined and focused author, whereas Wilson has a more expansive and developed sense of a intuitionist morality. If one can’t read both – and if the reader is careful to focus on the key concepts rather than the supporting evidence and ancillary reflections – then this book is the one to get. Extreme relativism and extreme religiosity are no longer necessarily appropriate for an intuitional moral disposition. Moral balance, based on the four intuitions, are sufficient and necessary for a virtuous life.

⭐James Q has clearly thought about the inner goodness of humanity for years. He has organized a compelling analysis of the nurturing of morality, or not and where society should be going with it.

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